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Technology Stocks : 3DFX -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jeff Lins who wrote (5921)	7/31/1998 1:57:00 AM
From: Chip Anderson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 16960

I heard a couple of important things today from a "friend" that talked to Greg Ballard today: 1.) Banshee went into full scale production this week!!!! Ahead of schedule and plan! 2.) Major Banshee OEM announcements are coming in mid-September :-( The delay is because of customer concerns (???). 3.) Greg says that Banshee sales may account for up to 20% of Q3 sales (as opposed to the 10% TDFX stated a couple of weeks ago). Put _that_ in your spreadsheet and crank on it! 4.) Still no news on whether the infamous demo machine was Intel-based or AMD-based... To be clear, this is "friend-of-a-friend-said-that-Greg-said..." info. Treat it accordingly. Chip coolhistory.com

To: Jeff Lins who wrote (5921)	7/31/1998 3:33:00 AM
From: Patrick Grinsell	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 16960

Grab-bag of topics Jeff, thanks for the consideration on the questions. Anybody notice that Banshee has inputs for 3d shutter glasses? Why do I get the sneaking suspicion that Metabyte does the driver development for 3dfx? DirectX on Friday, Glide 3.0 due on Monday. Tom's Hardware second Banshee (16MB) review due Friday. I personally find it hard to believe that any OEM would take on the Banshee without seeing the final drivers and silicon. One driver bug could have people sending back their PC's in droves. My guess is that OEM's will announce as soon as they have seen the public test the product on the retail shelves. Patience Grasshopper. The Rendition V3300 will be a socketX (ala Micron) implementation and is rumored to have a spec sheet to make even Nvidia blush. I realize that 3dfx spun off Quantum3d, but the financials are still pretty compelling to integrate. ATI has a net after-tax income of about 15% of sales. That's $15 dollars for every hundred dollar board. If ATI weren't integrated that $15 would probably be lining the coffers of S3 or even 3dfx. If 3dfx wants to become serious about pricing in the OEM market, and they want to make money, it only makes sense. Matrox and ATI were the #1 and #2 add-in board sales for all of 1997. It isn't a coincidence that they are both vertically integrated companies. With board manufacturers taking mostly reference designs anyway, they are not adding much in the terms of technology. I estimate that Diamond makes triple what 3dfx does per Voodoo2 unit. A tasty temptation even at a large loss in distribution and a virtual must if 3dfx plans on being a real player in the market. Waldeen <<But moving forward here, TDFX should now at least be able to quickly release a Voodoo2 follow on that is SLI compatible with Banshee (stripped down Banshee). Are they going to do this? If not, why not?>> I think they already tried to go this route and were slammed mid-stride last quarter. What you are describing is the still-born Voodoo 1.5 but it isn't known whether it could SLI with Banshee. Chip, thanks for Pimpin' the 20% news. I'll stop sweating now. Could someone please explain to me the theory of, "The Price is down so I should sell". Anybody else think this is a horrible way to invest? S3 is using .25 micron process for Savage3d. I'm not sure this was public yet. Thanks for the excellent debate guys, Pat